Google Translate has trouble with this site

ezekielf · 2022-03-25T02:25:25.798Z

From time to time I find myself wanting to read a conversation in a language I don’t speak on the old forums. In these cases, I put the url into Google Translate like this:
Google Translate forum.openstreetmap.org example (original link)

This doesn’t seem to work with this site. It just shows a blank page instead of a translated version.
Google Translate community.openstreetmap.org example (original link)

image885×458 12.4 KB

I’ve tried this on several other Discourse instances as well and found the same results, so perhaps this is just a fundamental limitation of Discourse being a client rendered JavaScript application. Does anyone know if there is a way to make this work like it does on most other websites? If not, I saw there was some discussion of adding a machine translation plugin. That would serve the same purpose.

SomeoneElse · 2022-03-25T07:54:15.976Z

For info, I’m seeing axactly the same problem. An attempt to translate the Hungarian forum here into English generates a URL of

ht tps://community-openstreetmap-org.translate.goog/t/openstreetmap-hungary/722?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

(deliberately breaking the URL to stop Discourse replacing it with a broken link)

but the resulting page is empty.

jleedev · 2022-03-25T10:57:23.003Z

Add /print to the end of the URL, e.g.

https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/google-translate-has-trouble-with-this-site/736/print

Translates like so:

OpenStreetMap Community – 25 Mar 22

Google Translate has trouble with this site

From time to time I find myself wanting to read a conversation in a language I don’t speak on the old forums. In these cases, I put the url into Google Translate like this: Google Translate forum.openstreetmap.org example (original link) This...

Reading time: 1 mins 🕑 Likes: 2 ❤

nukeador · 2022-03-25T11:12:36.186Z

It seems it’s a google translate limitation with webapps that fetch the content via js. You can use the workaround @jleedev mentioned.

ezekielf · 2022-03-25T20:33:54.605Z

Thanks for the workaround, @jdeeve. Rather annoying that it pops open the browser’s print dialog automatically and removes much of the formatting but it’s better than a blank page. It would be nice if there was a query string parameter that forced the server side rendering Discourse falls back to when JS is disabled and for web index crawlers. Anyway whether it’s due to a google translate limitation or a discourse limitation this is something that works well with the old forum and doesn’t with this new one. I think ensuring there is an easy way for people to get a translation should be a priority.

SomeoneElse · 2022-03-25T21:41:00.146Z

That still isn’t working for me?

In the LHS of https://translate.google.ca I have https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/openstreetmap-hungary/722/2/print, and result is then https://community-openstreetmap-org.translate.goog/t/openstreetmap-hungary/722/2/print?_x_tr_sl=hu&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp which just says " Oops! That page doesn’t exist or is private.".

jleedev · 2022-03-27T12:04:55.997Z

Need to omit the second number in the path, so https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/openstreetmap-hungary/722/print.

The site responds to Control+P by opening this for you.

SomeoneElse · 2022-03-27T12:51:55.782Z

That still doesn’t work for me - that gets me https://community-openstreetmap-org.translate.goog/t/openstreetmap-hungary/722/print?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp , which shows a print preview in Hungarian.

I’m using Firefox, if thats relevant.

jleedev · 2022-03-28T19:43:31.255Z

Oof, there are a couple annoying things happening at once:

The version of Firefox (Android) I was using doesn’t actually support printing, so it worked fine for me.
The extent to which printing blocks the page is nonstandard. (Chrome begins to print the page when asked but keeps on running scripts.) If you cancel the print preview dialog, the translation will commence.
Google Translate isn’t content to read the <noscript> version of a page, it insists on being clever.
Google Translate no longer translates web pages server side, but delivers a page that translates chunks of text as they scroll into view, so you need to scroll to the bottom of the page for the entire text to get translated.

Instead of /print you can use ?_escaped_fragment_, but this does not deliver the whole topic on a single page.

https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-discourse-play-nice-with-the-wayback-machine/34579?_escaped_fragment_&page=2 → https://meta-discourse-org.translate.goog/t/make-discourse-play-nice-with-the-wayback-machine/34579?_escaped_fragment_&page=2&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=la&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

This is super annoying.

nukeador · 2022-04-06T12:38:25.086Z

There’s been agreement to test the installation of translator plugin to solve the issue of translating content here:

We Need The Discourse Translation Plugin 🐞 This forum issues and requests

During Friday’s meeting there was agreement and testing will be run to evaluate the best way to implement this plugin

SomeoneElse · 2022-04-09T18:13:03.672Z

For completeness, omitting the second number in the URL does work in Google translate on Android, although of course the context is completely lost you have to find the bit of the thread you were trying to translate.

ezekielf · 2022-04-09T23:15:50.539Z

Another thing that works is using Google Chrome.
Google Translate is tightly integrated in that browser and it doesn’t require the print workaround. Not an ideal solution for those of us who prefer other browsers though.

nukeador · 2022-04-11T11:00:01.135Z

I personally use the Simple Translation addon in Firefox and works great

GitHub

GitHub - sienori/simple-translate: WebExtensions for translating text on web...

WebExtensions for translating text on web pages. Contribute to sienori/simple-translate development by creating an account on GitHub.

ezekielf · 2022-04-11T16:38:07.604Z

Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve just tried it out to see if it works better than the addon I’ve been using (To Google Translate). Unfortunately it seems like the full page translation works in the same way, and fails with client side rendering.

Screen Shot 2022-04-11 at 12.28.50 PM2434×738 52.1 KB

Is this working for you in some other way, or do you just select blocks of text to translate? Maybe that’s what you mean by “works great”. Translating post by post certainly works better than the other addon I’ve been using:

Screen Shot 2022-04-11 at 12.32.41 PM1986×1062 172 KB

nukeador · 2022-04-11T17:05:30.656Z

Zeke Farwell:

Is this working for you in some other way, or do you just select blocks of text to translate? Maybe that’s what you mean by “works great”.

Yes, I highlight the part I want to be translated first and get the in-context translation.

nukeador · 2022-06-14T09:45:53.033Z

Now that the site has built-in translation button, I think we can close this request. Please comment if you think it should be still open.

Thanks!

grant21 · 2022-06-23T12:40:38.815Z

Thanks for creating the thread, I also facing the same issue, as google translate does not work on one site. it shows error. I will try firefox addon if it became available as a Chrome extension.

SomeoneElse · 2022-06-23T12:46:02.891Z

You should be able to use the built-in translate button now - the little “globe” below each post?

SomeoneElse · 2022-09-29T19:30:51.852Z

You can’t use Google Translate, because the site doesn’t work with that, but do you see the little “globe” below each post that you want to translate? Click that, on a post by post basis, and you can see translations.

It’s obviously not as flexible a solution, and the translations aren’t as good, but it does work.

Hungerburg · 2022-10-09T20:54:06.110Z

SomeoneElse:

the translations aren’t as good

From English to German, I sometimes compare bing, google and deepl. Results vary, no clear all-time winner.

[Above sentences, no one gets both two good. One gets the second clause good and the first one bad, one the other way around. Maybe my English is not up to standard?]